


The Girls That Are Wanted

by RogueBelle



Series: Betrothal Series [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Death Eaters, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Pre-Canon, Rating: PG13, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RogueBelle/pseuds/RogueBelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betrothal Series #1: Upon hearing news of a discarded paramour's engagement, Bellatrix muses on what it is that sets her apart from the other girls of her age and status.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girls That Are Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2006; revived now as I revisit the series to fill in the gaps.

_The girls that are wanted are good girls_  
Good from the heart to the lips  
Pure as the lily is white and pure  
From its heart to its sweet leaf tips.

_The girls that are wanted are girls with hearts_  
They are wanted for mothers and wives  
Wanted to cradle in loving arms  
The strongest and frailest lives.

_The clever, the witty, the brilliant girl_  
There are few who can understand  
But oh! For the wise, loving home girls  
There's a constant, steady demand  
\--J. H. Gray, c. 1880

"Oh look," Narcissa said one morning, coming into the Silver Room with a stack of letters and a house-elf behind her balancing a tea-tray. "Catherine Harmon's announced her engagement. To Mr Haleforth."

Bellatrix looked up sharply from where she had been lounging, cat-like, in a sunbeam. "John or Andrew?" she asked.

"John," Narcissa replied. "We’ve been invited to a ball. I suppose Catherine's mother is looking to do all she can to further that girl. Well, she couldn't have expected to do any better than a Haleforth, given the unfortunate circumstances of her birth. Oh, and we’ve been invited to Aunt Elaine's for tea next week, and to a luncheon given by Mrs Rookwood on Sunday..."

But Bellatrix had stopped listening. It was a bit of a surprise, though perhaps it shouldn't have been. _'Of course he’d have to marry someone,_ ' she considered, _'and it certainly wasn’t going to be me.'_

It never was, of course, and by her own design. She had tired of Haleforth several weeks earlier and given him his marching orders. And he, evidently, had limped off to Catherine Harmon.

Bellatrix had certainly had her share of suitors, and the portions of several other women as well. It had never made her very popular with the other girls her age. Not that Bellatrix cared. Often she preferred the company of men; they might have all been thinking with the wrong part of their anatomies, but she generally considered that an improvement over the women of her acquaintance, whose primary concerns were trivialities and gossip. If she did desire female companionship, she had a sister, and a spare few friends who had stayed loyal, and who had more than three thoughts rattling inside their heads. The rest weren't worth worrying about.

The men, though, flocked to her, and always had. From the time she first began to bud into the curvy figure of womanhood, she had attracted notice. She had been twelve when the boys had first started stealing kisses from her, though at first it earned them no greater reward than broken noses. When she had flowered fully, she had become irresistible.

Clever girl that she was, Bellatrix wielded her weapons with perilous accuracy. She knew early on what token all her hounds sought, and she dangled it continually out of reach, tempting and enticing to see which would hunt the surest and most devotedly. Rodolphus Lestrange had won the prize in the end, and Bellatrix had never been sorry for it. Of course, she was never sorry for anything. What cause, when you never made decisions you would come to regret?

Since then, she had led all of her suitors a merry dance. Bellatrix knew some of the other young women called her loose, but never allowed their jealousy to affect her. "Those cows," she had told her cousin Magdalena once, "guard themselves so cautiously you’d think they had the lost treasures of the Knights Templar tucked between their thighs. It's a wonder they’ve not set dragons to stand sentinel at the cavern’s opening." Bellatrix lived as she pleased, and took her pleasures where she wished. Affairs began and ended on her terms, and no docile demeanor was worth trading that freedom.

The men praised her beauty to no end. Raphael Eldridge loved to let her hair run through his fingers, rippling like sable water. Philip Holgrave declared her divine every time he had the opportunity, attaching her to the pagan standards of perfection of form, the sensuality of Venus, the strength of Ishtar, the regal sublimity of Isis. Julian Pucey had a fascination with her back; if she let him tarry after their escapades, he would often spend time rubbing it, working out the knots of tension. Garret Sidney had once sent an owl bearing leafs of poetry, sonnets devoted to the midnight glory of her eyes and the invitation to sin that lay on her carmine lips. (Bellatrix had been glad he had not delivered these personally, as she had laughed herself into a coughing fit at the ludicrous attempts at paeans). Stephen Wilkes continually made gifts of black pearls and onyx beads, claiming that nothing else could do justice to complementing her dark beauty. Even Rodolphus Lestrange, who dared to challenge her where the other men cowered, made no attempts to hide how attractive he found her, how resplendent she was in his eyes.

For all their flatteries and fealty, none of them mattered to her. Some amused more than others, to be sure. Philip's unquestioning idolatry appealed to her ego, and almost nothing heated her blood like a good spat with Rodolphus. But none of them _mattered_. She never let them.

Bellatrix’s gaze wandered out the window, where the glow of an early summer morning made everything appear crisp and fresh, inviting those still indoors to come out and grasp their little piece of a perfect day. _'It's always women like Catherine Harmon they slink off to.'_ The simpering misses, the truly easy women, easy in spirit if not in body, and Bellatrix considered that far more shameful. The girls with sunlit smiles, who allowed themselves to be managed, who never lost their tempers, never threw tantrums, to whom it would never occur to yell at a man, or throw things at him, or heavens forbid enter a duel with him. They picked their wives from the proper debutantes, the delicate angels who fluttered about in pastel flounces, the women Bellatrix had no time for. Uriel Parkinson had married Clio Eversleigh. Charles Nott had married Danielle Parkinson. Patrick Warrington had married Lesair Rookwood. John Haleforth was marrying Catherine Harmon.

And always straight from her.

 _'From me to the weaklings and waifs.'_ And she wondered why.

Well, if they were so frail themselves as to need to marry such malleable creatures, Bellatrix considered herself well rid of them. _'May the heavens strike me down and the hells swallow me up before I bind myself to someone so pathetically insecure,'_ she thought. _'All the better that Haleforth is out of the running. Father will never link me to someone who isn’t worthy of a real woman. Let them take their meek little wretches to wed and to bed, and well matched to them.'_ Bellatrix knew she could never marry someone too tender to endure the tempest. The men who chose frail, fainting wives after their impassioned affairs with Bellatrix had seen and desired in the Black Rose what they only wished they could have strength enough to deserve.

"Bellatrix. Bellatrix, are you even listening to me?"

Bella’s eyes drifted back to her sister's delicate features, and she let a smile slide over her face. "Of course I am, Cissy," she said, voice tinged with patently false sweetness.

Narcissa’s pretty mouth turned into the slightest of frowns, but it melted away quickly, and she held out a letter. "Alipes brought something for you as well." There was a barely perceptible hint of impishness lurking in the back of the cornflower-blue eyes; Bellatrix didn’t think anyone but herself would have noticed. "The seal is House Lestrange's." The dulcet innocence of Narcissa’s voice was flawless, and her face remained impassive, its usual porcelain mask, but for that miniscule glint, the single cloud in the sky of her eyes.

Bellatrix didn't care for the implications subtly written on that dainty countenance. "Give me that," she snapped, snatching the letter from Narcissa's slender fingers.

The rosebud lips pouted slightly as Narcissa sank gracefully onto a chaise. "You'll tell me what it says, I hope."

"I won’t," Bellatrix petulantly replied, though knowing perfectly well she would anyway; Bellatrix had no secrets from her sister. She looked at the seal for a moment before breaking it: the crest of the Lestrange family, a large L flanked by two falcons, pressed into navy blue wax. Bellatrix unfolded the letter and read it, pretending not to notice Narcissa's curious eyes on her.

>   
>  _Mia Bella—_  
> 

>   
>  _I request the pleasure of your company at my mother's annual Midsummer Ball. She has not yet sent out invitations, but I thought to anticipate the deluge of offers you are likely to receive from lesser men once she does. I should consider myself most fortunate if you wound consent to attending on my arm. I can think of no better way to celebrate high summer than by basking in your radiant beauty, mia rosa canina._  
> 

>   
>  _Yours,_  
> 

>   
>  _R.R.L._  
> 

She couldn’t help but smirk at his presumption, and his foresight. _'Clever of him to get the jump on everyone else...'_ It was classic Rodolphus, the sort of language she had come to expect from him: an ample dose of flattery, accompanied by his own unique brand of arrogance, and a none-too-subtle jibe at her other suitors. She was almost tempted to say no, just to see how he'd react. Her guess was that he'd be asking who she would be attending with, so that he would know who he would need to hex into a coma to clear the way for himself. She might even be able to provoke him into losing his temper at her -- _'And that would be a quite amusing treat.'_ She liked Rodolphus best when he wasn't pretending to be chivalrous; the image of gallant courtly knight didn't suit him particularly well. _'Plundering warlord, maybe.'_

"Well?" Narcissa said expectantly, as Bellatrix refolded the letter.

"He's asked me to his mother's Midsummer Ball." Bellatrix didn't need to clarify which 'he' she spoke of; only one of the Lestrange brothers had ever been interesting enough to her to warrant discussion.

Narcissa tilted her head to the side slightly. "But Mrs Lestrange hasn't sent out—"

"I know." Bellatrix's smirk slid into a full-out grin. "He wanted to nip in and ask me before the competition has a chance."

Pale eyebrows arched over a vaguely amused face. "Well. Mr Lestrange seems to have set his mark, hasn't he?"

Bellatrix snorted softly as she leaned back into the sunbeam. "Don't be so sure." She was thinking of John Haleforth, and how Rodolphus would respond when she finally tired of him once and for all and instructed him to give up the chase. Maybe it wouldn't come to that; maybe he would weary of sparring with her, as some others had, and surrender of his own volition.

Raising the letter to eye level and looking again at the broken seal, Bellatrix wondered mildly which milksop miss Rodolphus Lestrange would eventually end up with.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this work, please check out [my blog](http://cassmorriswrites.com)! I also write original fiction, and my debut novel will be out January 2018.


End file.
